Don’t get me wrong, things are going great with Justin and I.  We had a lovely Valentine’s Day dinner, even if it was before the actual date itself. On the 14th, he had to work all night, and I had to work until 9, so there was no love on that day.  I decided it was the titular massacre when I started to learn how to french a rack of lamb.

(I hope you’re all giggling about “frenching” a rack of lamb, because I was.  When I wasn’t working three different knives through it.)

Justin and I had lamb chops for dinner, a really delicious Ina Garten meal, with this nice Greek yogurt to accompany.  It was actually really simple to prepare the meal itself, but getting the meat into working order was a bit of a trick.  The recipe calls for these “frenched” chops; frenching being the process by which you remove fat and tissue and “membrane” (seriously, a word used in the how-to video’s description) from the rib bones.  It gives the chops that nice little stick of bone at the end that you see in restaurants and on TV.  Well, you have to remove that!  Watch!

She makes it look easy, right?  It starts off simple enough, cutting those nice simple lines, scoring the membrane.  The thing is, her rack of lamb must have been a real cheap date; it all basically falls off.  She’s like one of those suitors who just snaps his fingers and the bra pops open.  My rack of lamb was locked up pretty securely, a modest, born-again little darling, afraid of what her father might think if he only knew what I was doing to her.  I pulled and pulled, cleaned and cleaned, scoured, scored, and still couldn’t get all of the fat off.  Justin finally stepped in and told me to forget it, that I was just going to grill it all off anyway.  (For the record, it didn’t get all grilled off…the bones caught fire and were charred).

The recipe itself, though, is no struggle.  It has a lot of flavor, and is pretty simple.  Ina, my girl, loves her simple recipes…have I not confessed my undying love of Ina Garten?  Well, let me do it now.  I would marry her.  It’s lamb, in a nice marinade of rosemary, oregano, lemon juice, and red wine, which is then grilled/rested/devoured.  It’s served over this quick yogurt sauce with mint.  Pretty much everything is done in advance, which left time for Justin to make ice cream and baklava, and for me to make rosemary apple turnovers and roasted cauliflower.  And we had time for drinks.  My friend Sam recommended a nice wine from the shop he works at, and it was a really great night.

Next time, though, I’m going to get that rack of lamb frenched at the butchers.  He can have all of the fun.

• 4 large garlic cloves
• 3 tbs fresh rosemary, chopped
• 1.5 tsp dried oregano
• kosher salt/ground pepper
• .5 c lemon juice
• .5 c olive oil
• .5 c dry red wine
• rack of lamb, frenched and cut into chops

Pulse the garlic, rosemary, oregano, 1.5 tsp salt and 1 tsp pepper into a food processor until the herbs are minced.  Ad the liquids, and combine.  Place the chops into a large dish, and pour the mixture over them.  Refrigerate for at least two hours, but overnight is best.  (I did these for like 5 hours, and they were fine).

Prep your grill at medium high heat.  Take the lamb out of the marinade, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and grill for 4-5 minutes on each side.  (They may catch fire…it’s OK).  Cover with aluminum foil, rest for 10 minutes.  Serve with the mint sauce.

• .5 c chopped fresh mint leaves
• 2 tbs dill
• pinch red pepper flakes
• 1 tbs olive oil
• 1 tbs lemon juice
• 7 oz Greek yogurt (you can find 7 oz packages at the grocery store)
• 1 tsp Kosher salt
• pepper

Add the mint, dill, red pepper flakes, olive oil, and lemon juice to a food processor, and puree until it’s a paste.  Add the yogurt, salt, and pepper and combine.  Transfer to a bowl, and refrigerate.  The flavors “develop”.

Hello again.  It’s been some time, nice to see you.  Have some stew.

I’m not one to set formal resolutions or anything, but for Christmas this year, I was given so many toys to play with in the kitchen.  So, so many.  My parents bought me a dutch oven, my amazing boyfriend an amazing stand mixer.  Friends bought me nice casserole dishes, my boyfriend’s parents attachments for the stand mixer and things for making nice pizzas.  And, since the last time I wrote anything, I’ve had so many times that I thought “I should write about this.”  So I’m going to.

To propel this renaissance in the kitchen, I set out to make a classic meal, the dish that launched a thousand careers.  I’m pretty ignorant about the actual history, but if you believe the movie, it’s Julia Child’s Boeuf Bourguignon that put her on the map in the cookbook world, and it’s the first thing that other Julia made in her blog, too.  So, even though it’s not the first thing that I’ve made, and while I’m not planning on devolving into some life-questioning Child-disciple, I figured that Boeuf Bourguignon would be a pretty good meal to jump start the writing process.

There were a few errors in this thinking, I found, when making it.  First, it is the hardest meal in the world to spell, and is even harder to pronounce.  My roommate and I referred to it as “BUH, buh-buh-buh” rather than try and speak French.  My roommate also squawked around like Julia Child while I was making it.  Be aware of these annoyances before starting; it’s very probable that you will have to deal with them as well.

Second, while it turned out delicious, it took roughly seven years to prepare.  I don’t have a problem with spending that long preparing a meal, but in the end, it was really indistinguishable from a general beef stew.  In the interest of not spending a fortune for every meal, I did have to eliminate a few ingredients from the list, namely the bacon rind and the small onions.  I substituted chopped yellow onion for the small white ones, but I had no idea what a bacon rind was until I looked it up.  I also learned that Bacon Rind was a Native American leader in the late 19th century.  In any case, I had 6 strips of bacon from the farm in the freezer, so I just used those.  I’m pretty sure I didn’t do the bacon part right, and I wonder if that would have altered the taste, to make it virtually blast with a flavor so sublime, so transcendent, as to eradicate from memory all other beef stews.  I’m skeptical.

Finally, this dish is unnecessarily complicated, so much so that I was really put off from making it again.  While the dutch oven is in the oven, you have to brown braise onions and saute mushrooms.  I did both of those things, but once they go into the stew, it’s almost as if they lose the flavors associated with their preparation.  The mushrooms taste amazing sauteed in butter when they’re solo, but mixed in the melee of the stew, they lack any kind of defining characteristic.  And the onions, well, I think that I would change a few steps around if I were to do this again, sauteing the onions in the bacon grease maybe, and setting them aside while browning the beef.

That isn’t to say that making Boeuf Bourguignon wasn’t a positive experiment.  It was delicious, if not what I expected, and it was a lot of fun getting my hands on a classic recipe.  I can definitely see stay-at-home moms in 1961 slaving, proverbially, over the stove for hours.  When a friend of mine found out that I made it, she told me something very, very true: It is great experience to make, just not necessarily one that is worth repeating.

It seemed like serendipity, then, when a few weeks ago, Justin came across an ice cream maker for just $8 at a Goodwill store.  We were there looking for a raft that my aqua-phobic dog could lounge on while we went swimming, but instead of a raft, he found this.  It seemed too good of a deal to pass up (Target lists the same contraption, from Rival, at $29.99), so I plunked down the eight bucks and took it home.  See, earlier that week, I had gotten my Bon Appetit magazine in the mail, and there was a recipe for buttermilk ice cream.  On top of THAT, I already had all of the ingredients, but was only lacking the ice cream maker.  It all came together, almost too well.  Like I said: I think it’s stupid not to act on lucky chances, even if they’re this simple.

Flash-forward a little bit.  The raw ingredients I had on hand have gone bad, and I still haven’t taken the thing out of the box (save to make sure that it actually turned on).  I’m still determined, though, to make this ice cream, so I shuffle down to the store, and pick up the cream and buttermilk.  I have no idea how I’m going to use the buttermilk I don’t need for this, but I’m not concerned–I’ve got ice cream blinders on.  (The cream, of course, has gone in coffee, and is going in a gratin later on this week).  It’s 9 o’clock on Sunday night, and I’m thinking I’m going to start.

It doesn’t happen.  This recipe takes forever just to get in the freezer.

Monday morning comes.  I’ve had a bowl chilling in the freezer overnight, and I have all day to get this done.  The process isn’t really all that complicated, but there are a lot of times where you just kind of have to wait.  First thing, I whisk together six egg yolks.  It’s pretty fun (if messy), separating the yolk from the white, and I always feel like a badass when I do it–it makes you feel good, knowing how to do something that TV chefs always have to demonstrate!

While that’s going on, I combined the cream, raw sugar, and a pinch of salt, and had it simmering on the stove until the sugar dissolved.  The mixture smells great, with a kind of caramel scent.  Once that was ready, I combined the cream mixture egg yolks, tempering the eggs first so they didn’t scramble.  Then that goes back on the stove to simmer, for three or so minutes, until the custard is thick enough to cover the back of a wooden spoon.  It seems like an idiotic instruction, but you can definitely tell when that’s happened.  Once this is ready, it comes off of the heat.

Then, the cold bowl comes out of the freezer, and the buttermilk goes in.  I strained the custard mixture into the buttermilk, added the vanilla extract, and whisked that all together.  It needed to go into the refrigerator to chill, uncovered, for two hours.

(The recipe says “prep time: 15 minutes, but as you can see, that is all bull.  This is not anywhere close to being a simple recipe.  At this count, I’ve already used two bowls, a saucepan, and a strainer (which will take up most of the dishwasher, and haven’t even gotten to the ice cream maker yet.)

Finally, the time has come to pour the stuff into the ice cream maker, and “process…according to manufacturer’s instructions”, which, since I bought the thing from the thrift store, aren’t present.  The box, though, says “less than a half an hour”, so I figure 25 minutes ought to do the trick.  I pour it in and let it churn for 25 minutes.  Then, I pour it into yet another bowl, and freeze it.  At this point, there’s nothing really for me to do besides clean up and think about the different variations I can try with this: mostly, I was thinking about adding bourbon to it.  I love vanilla-bourbon ice cream (really, I just love bourbon).

After letting it sit overnight, I come home and have a mug of this stuff for dessert.  It’s not so good, folks, which is pretty disappointing, considering the amount of time I spent on it.  It tastes kind of like it smells.  It has the caramel notes from the raw sugar, and it has kind of an eggy quality from the egg yolks, which aren’t necessarily bad, but they’re not necessarily doing this dessert any favors.  On top of that, it’s got a little grit to it; you can taste little globules or bits in the finished product.  Maybe it’s freezer-burned, maybe the thrift store ice cream maker didn’t churn it right, but whatever the case may be, it doesn’t taste right.  I powered through the mug of ice cream defiantly, because, you know, I’m at least going to finish a mug of it.

The rest of this ice cream, though, is destined for the trash.  Just goes to show, though, that some lucky coincidences aren’t all that lucky.  Oh well, better luck next time.

Recipe : Buttermilk Ice Cream (from Bon Appetit)

• 6 large egg yolks
• 2 cups, heavy whipping cream
• 2/3 cup raw sugar (demerara sugar, sugar in the raw, turbinado)
• 1 cup cold buttermilk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• pinch of salt

Combine cream, sugar salt in saucepan.  Simmer to dissolve sugar.  Temper and combine eggs and stir over medium-high heat, until custard coats the back of a wooden spoon.  Strain into cold buttermilk.  Whisk in vanilla, and then chill, uncovered, for around 2 hours.  Process custard in the ice cream maker, and then freeze, at least 6 hours.  Enjoy?  Hopefully.

Bear with me here, I just got back from camping in West Virginia with Justin on Tuesday afternoon, and I’m still trying to remember what it’s like to cook without using aluminum foil.  This past weekend, in between the hiking and swimming and comforting an anxious puppy, most every dinner was prepared in foil, and I’m here to tell you, it’s perfect for the summer.  And, if you buy it carefully and do it right, it’s a pretty green way to not have a lot of mess to clean up!!  How about that.

You’ll have to forgive the exclamation points, but cooking a meal in aluminum foil isn’t only easy, but it placates my midwestern urges to cook everything in one dish, together, à la casserole.  You just have to wrap it all up in one, the flavors mingle together, and then, ten minutes later, it’s done!  You don’t even need a plate!

Here’s three things you can do in foil, whether or not you’re camping.  Just sayin’, though: you can prepare a lot of these ahead of time, and then throw them on the grill or fire or in the coals when you’re ready.  A word to the wise, though, because I’m not going to say it three separate times: let the food sit for a few minutes (up to ten, even) before you open the packets.  They’ll be steaming, and will burn the crap out of your hand (trust me).

Salmon fillets, with capers and lemon

I can’t take full credit here, even though I didn’t use a recipe to come up with this: I remember seeing Rachael Ray do this on her TV show a long time ago.  This one takes a few more ingredients, so it’s a good one to make at home for the grill, or prep earlier.  Just cut your salmon fillets into your desired sizes, and season them with a little salt and pepper.  Put them in enough foil to wrap around them, and spoon about a teaspoon of capers over them.  Then sprinkle a little tarragon, and put a lemon on top.  In my packets, I also added some corn, cut off of the cob, but you don’t need to do that.  I just added it in because it wouldn’t work in my grill basket.  Wrap it up in the foil, and then put it on the grill, around medium high heat, 5-6 minutes a side.

Burritos

I feel like I discovered burritos as a camp food.  Just put your toppings in the tortilla, wrap it in the foil and put them on the grill or in the fire!  It seems so obvious, you know?  Even the burritos at Taco Bell come in foil.  But, when I came home all self-congratulatory and proud of myself to tell my roommate, she actually nodded her head, and went “Hmm!” in a way that sounded kind of impressed.  So, now that my head is gigantic, I’m going to go and claim campfire burritos in my name.  I made mine with leftover chicken from the night before (also made in foil packets), so they just needed to cook long enough to melt the cheese.  Obviously, you’d have to cook your chicken, either ahead of time, or at the campsite.  I’m pretty sure, though, that cooking the chicken in the tortilla at the same time as the veggies and beans is a bad idea.

Corn on the cob

Finally, corn.  Corn comes in its own packet, and you can grill corn with the husk still on.  Just make sure you soak it for awhile so it doesn’t catch fire.  If you bought corn without the husks on, or don’t want to deal with it, you can grill the corn in aluminum foil.  Plus, when you grill corn in the foil (rather than the husk), you can put a little butter, salt and pepper, or Old Bay (or whatever you eat on your corn) in the foil, too, and the whole thing gets cooked together.  This is really more of a convenience thing, though; I don’t know anyone who finds manually applying butter to their corn on the cob to be too terribly taxing.

So there you have it, my tribute to aluminum foil.  Go out and pick some up (preferably the recycled kind!) and start cooking outside.  It’s too damn hot to be inside anyway.

Cobbler, see, is a reason to turn on your oven in the summer.

Baltimore in the summer is HOT, especially this summer, where we’ve already had several 100°+ days.  It’s humid and it’s uncomfortable, but for cobbler, I’ll do it.  I’ll warm the whole house up, causing discomfort to roommate, boyfriend, and dog, for cobbler.  I’ll do it because it is a summer dessert–who eats cobbler in the winter?  I’ll do it because making it is child’s play.  And, of course, because cobbler is a vehicle for cool whip.

The heat, though, is the only uncomfortable part of making cobbler.  The dough is really easy and malleable, so that if you’re covering your whole cobbler with a crust, it’s easy to roll-out and shape.  There’s no pie-crust problems here; the dough just stretches and conforms and if you eff it up, you can just ball the thing back together and re-do without a problem.

It’s not actually all that bad for you, either, at least compared to other baked treats.  Think about it: there’s quite a bit of butter in it, sure, but you’re not going to eat the entire cobbler yourself, right?  There’s only a half cup of sugar in it, which is not awesome or anything, but again, everything in moderation (and, for God’s sake, it’s a dessert!).  Think about how much sugar and lard goes into pie!  This almost looks like health food, comparatively, and if you squint a little.

Fruit Ingredients

• Lots of options for fruit: frozen blueberries, raspberries, etc.; ripened peaches (pitted and peeled); blackberries; apples, cored (obviously).  It should, when all is said and done, equal about 6 cups.
• 1/2 c sugar
• 1/4 all purpose flour
• 1 tsp lime zest

Crust Ingredients

• 1 3/4  c all purpose flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 6 tbs chilled butter
• 3/4 c buttermilk

It’s a pretty simple process to make.  Preheat the oven to 375°, allow your roommates or living partners or whoever a minute or two to whine about the heat.  In a bowl, dump some fruit.  It should be, according to Ms. Rombauer, about 6 cups, and her book gives about 5 different combinations of frozen or ripened fruits you can use.  Mix and match–I used frozen blueberries and frozen raspberries.  Toss it with the sugar, quarter cup of flour, and the lime zest.  Dump that into an ungreased 9×13 pan, and spread it out evenly.

For the topping, put the flour, baking powder and soda, and salt into a food processor.  Mix that up, and then add the butter, and then the buttermilk.  When it comes together, turn it out of the processor bowl and onto a flour board to knead gently.  Flour up a rolling pin and the board again, and roll out the dough to cover the cobbler.  I ended up with bit of a patchwork, which wasn’t the most attractive, but it’ll do.  You can also make a lattice top, or just drop bits of biscuits into the fruit (though, to me, that doesn’t seem like much of a baked good).  Brush the top with an egg, and then sprinkle with a little bit of sugar.

Bake the whole thing for 45-50 minutes, and let cool for 15 minutes before eating.  Top it with as much whipped cream as is humanly possible.  Think about how amazing the summer is.

—

So, about finally coming back.

Most importantly, I’m thinking this thing will be weekly, updating on either Sunday evening or Monday morning.  Once I go back to work in August, it will definitely be Sunday evenings, but for now, the posts will be at least one a week, more towards the end of the weekend. Non-specific enough?  Good.  The idea is to have a little more time to figure out something really good to make, rather than just panicking around five o’clock and throwing something together that is sort of good, and writing about it (although, that is probably more realistic, isn’t it?)  Also, hopefully I’ll get on some kind of schedule, and I’ll write more often, have the chance to edit more, and make, all-around, this blog a better blog.  Here’s hopin’.

Also, I got a new camera!  I’m still figuring out the macro settings, so there are a few “dreamy” looking photos in this bunch.  But whatever!  At least it’s not just my phone camera.

As for the new “theme”, I’m not sure I like it, and I might change it in a while.  For those of you reading on a reader, you don’t even notice!

Hi all.

Sorry for being absent.  Things have been busy.  I’ll let you know right now, I won’t be back until around July.  I’ve got to finish school, and then I’m taking some students to Spain.

I’ll be back in late June or early July–don’t worry–and hopefully I’ll be bringing a new format, and a new camera!  No more iPhone photos!

See you soon!

My mom did not teach me everything I know about cooking.  As inspired as that would be, especially on Mother’s Day, it’s not true.  My mom is extremely possessive of her kitchen, and instead of bringing people in to help prepare with her, she whisks intruders out, with instructions like “Go help Dad,” or “Let me know the score of the Lions game”, or, more simply, “Go.”  No little helpers to chop, mix, stir, or anything; my mother prefers to have everything her way, and just to serve the rest of us.  Everything is in its right place for her when she’s cooking, and there’s a kind of serenity to her kitchen.  The dramatic flare-ups, the minor temper tantrums that occasionally occur in mine don’t happen in hers.  And, really, I think that she enjoys the whole process of planning, prepping, cooking, serving.  It is a trait I inherited.

Rather than teach me everything, I think my mom has more watched me develop from the sidelines, and has put in her two coaching cents when appropriate.  She’s an avid reader of this here blog, and sometimes writes little helpful hints in the comments section.  I think she understands that it’s important to me to have my little failures, my disasters, and, hopefully, ultimately, some successes, and to do it on my own.

That’s not to say that she hasn’t passed on some gems to me.  The spaghetti sauce that I insist on making, even if it engenders some ridicule on my roommate’s part about my aversion to jarred tomato sauce, is from her, for one, and I make that stuff (see, no cursing, Mom!) at least once a month.  Also, these cookies are from my mom’s recipe; these pretties actually won a taste test competition (amongst my drunken friends on spring break, but still, a win is a win).  I don’t care where the recipe originally came from, whether it originated in some Betty Crocker test kitchen, for me, these cookie’s will always be my mom’s.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 c unsalted butter
• 3/4 c packed brown sugar
• 3/4 c sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 1/4 c flour
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• chocolate chips

First, get your oven going to 375°.  In your microwave, melt the butter.  Your bowl for the melted butter can become your trash bowl!

In one bowl, whisk together your dry ingredients: flour, brown sugar, salt, and soda.  In another bowl, mix your wet ones: sugar, eggs, butter, vanilla.  Add ‘em together.  Add the chocolate chips.  Spoon onto a baking sheet, a cookie should end up being about 1 tablespoon of batter.  Cook them for 12-16 minutes, depending on how hot 375° is.  For my oven, it’s 12 minutes.  The recipe makes about 24 cookies, and they should keep pretty well for about a week in a tupperware.

In the interest of full disclosure, I kind of bombed on these, even though I’ve made them a hundred times; I didn’t have enough all-purpose flour, so I had to add in some whole wheat, and the result wasn’t as amazing as it usually is.  The taste was still delicious, but they didn’t keep as chewy for long.  Normally, though, these things are delicious: they’re chewy, even a few days after baking them.  They have a little bit of a savory bite to them, so you’re not going to lose your mind with too much sweet.  And, they always remind me of being at home, and having my mom push food on me.

Spring is here, and the roommate and I have vaguely laid out our plans for what we want to do with our “garden” this year.  Last year, Laura planted a few herbs, but we didn’t really use them in any meals.  Mostly, they just sat there and went under-appreciated, and all but one of them died completely.  The rosemary miraculously survived the winter snow disasters, and is currently thriving without anyone having cared for it at all.  How’s that for defiance?

This year, I’ve planted a few more herbs: thyme, mint, basil, and lavender, for various reasons.  Thyme, because I never like using the ground, dried stuff; mint, because who doesn’t love mojitos; basil, because it’s a summer necessity; and lavender because it smells good. Also, all of those herbs are full sun plants, a necessary caveat since our patio has no shade at all.  I also bought a tomato plant that, in 80 days, should be giving us some pretty delicious tomatoes.  I’m thinking about getting some actual vegetables, too; I’ll probably have to make that decision pretty soon, though, because they’ll probably need to go into the ground pretty soon.

Here’s my worry with that, though: the ground.  I live on the most city of city blocks.  We don’t have any dirt whatsoever; it is all concrete, from our front porch all the way to our backyard “patio”, which is really just a parking pad we can’t use because neither of our cars can make the turn from the alley (we like it better this way, anyway).  Is it worth it to plant some zucchini or some cucumbers?  I’ve never really done anything like this, and there’s a pretty fair chance that I’m going to kill everything over the course of the summer.  But, and here’s a big what-if, what if we did this, and, with the CSA we already joined, we didn’t spend any money on vegetables over the summer.  We could spend our few bucks on corn and peaches at the market and be done with it?

That sounds like a pipe dream.

In any case, the herbs are in the dirt, ready to go.  I’m hoping I didn’t kill the mint or one of the thyme; I bought them a week ago at the market, and then set them on the windowsill to be forgotten for a week.  I’ll keep you posted on this experiment–what are you growing?  Hopefully something good.

Sunday mornings are supposed to be relaxing, right?  For most people, it’s the day to laze about a bit, read the newspaper, maybe go to church if they’re the god-fearin’ type, and maybe just to take a long walk with the dog.  Here in Baltimore, every restaurant in the city seems to serve a brunch special on Sundays.  But for me, Sundays aren’t really that relaxing during the school year.  See, I usually make a decision–I’ll take Saturday to do whatever, and then I’ll get my work stuff together (for the most part) on Sunday.  So, I wake up at eight, walk the dog, get breakfast going, and am usually in front of my computer or with my grades by 9:30.  It might sound like a depressing time (and it can be, especially on nice days), but I finish my stuff around 2:30, and then have the rest of the day to relax.

I woke up today, though, with a bit of a craving.  A few weeks ago, I made dinner for a date–it was a big deal!  You know how I feel about Rachael Ray, but I am with her one this one thing: cooking for someone is sexy.  For dessert, instead of having some kind of cookie, or ice cream, I made scones.  Killer scones.  They had dark chocolate and cinnamon, were nice and soft, and pretty much out of this world.  They were delicious; we topped them with Nutella.

I used to feel that scones were a little bit too much work.  I understand that the British love them, and I understand that Starbucks sells them by the truckload, but, seriously, in the real world, you’d have a doughnut, or a bagel.  Scones are hard to top with anything, but if you don’t, it kind of just feels like you’re eating a whole lot of grain.  These are not; they are beyond easy, and eating them without toppings doesn’t make you feel like you ate a meal of pure fiber.  After the date, my roommate and I tore through the rest of those bad boys in around three days; there’s been a scone-shaped void in our lives ever since.

Until today: at 8am, I was out of bed, walking the dog, and getting ready for these scones.  The recipe I got from a new blog I’m following: Eden Kitchen (which, in addition to being full of foods that look incredible, is written by a dude, which is doubly awesome; there need to be more men in the kitchen, and more men writing about what they’re making).  One of the fun things about this is that it’s pretty easily adaptable, even for someone like me: typically, a slave to the recipe.  You can play with the spices (I did both times I made these), and also play with the stuff that goes in them.  You cannot mess these up.  And three days later, they’ll be gone, and you’ll be jonesing.

Ingredients:

• 2 c whole wheat flour
• 1/2 tsp fine ground sea salt
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp cream of tartar
• 1 stick of butter, cut into tiny chunks or grated
• 1/2 c quinoa flour
• 1/4 sugar in the raw (and a little more for sprinkling)
• 1 c plain yogurt
• (1/4 c milk–the original recipe calls for this; I just realized that I forgot it this morning, and the world did not end, and I didn’t really notice much of a difference, other than the dough being less wet than the first time)
• Fillings: whatever you please! (I used dried cranberries today)
• Spices: Make them match your fillings, sort of.  But be brave! (I used cinnamon and nutmeg)

Preheat your oven to 400°.  Combine your whole wheat flour, salt, cream of tartar, and baking powder in a bowl.  Then, with your hands (clean them first), work the butter into the combination.  It should, at the end, resemble breadcrumbs; it should take you just a couple of minutes.  Wash your hands off when you’re done.

Add in the fillings and spices, along with the quinoa flour and sugar in the raw, and mix it all together.  Then add in the yogurt and the milk, and work it all together.  It is going to be very wet, and this is very good.  You can use a knife, a mixing spoon, or, if you’re like me (and your hands are clean), you can just work it together with your hands.

Lay the dough out on a cutting board, and flatten it into an approximation of a rectangle.  Cut that rectangle into twelve pieces.  Place them on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper, sprinkle a little extra sugar in the raw over them, and bake for 15-20 minutes.  Take ‘em out, let ‘em cool a bit, and enjoy.  Since you’ve chosen the fillings, there’s no way you can be disappointed.  I haven’t been yet.

**On a side note, I’m sorry I’ve not been writing much lately–in addition to everything else that goes on in life, it takes a long time to plan, cook, and write about any given meal.  That’s not really an excuse, per se, but more of a reality.  But I have some back-logged and ready to be written about, so hopefully there will be some good things coming up soon!

Recently, I started making my own.  I thought, at first, that making my own hummus was going to be something done purely for novelty’s sake; I would make it once, share it with my roommate, we’d say “Huh, that’s pretty OK,” and then buy another container of Sabra the next time we were in Safeway.  But making my own hummus is actually really fun; it’s fun to whip the chickpeas into a frenzy, and it’s fun to decide what you’re going to add into the finished product.  Not only does it give you a whole lot more control with how your hummus tastes, it comes with the added benefit of the right to be totally obnoxious and tell your friends “I made this from scratch!”  And, if this blog has shown you nothing else thus far, I love having that right.

Two caveats, though, before beginning: having a food processor is pretty much a necessity.  You’re not going to want to mash up your chickpeas with a fork, or even a potato masher.  It would take a lot of muscle and time, even if you’re trying to get back to the way they did it in ancient Macedonia or wherever.  Also, you’re going to need to go out and purchase some tahini paste–I got mine at Whole Foods, it is by the peanut butter.  You can also get it at Trader Joe’s, and probably Safeway or Kroger.  I wouldn’t count on finding it, though, at bargain-basement food emporiums like Shoppers.  Pretty much anything with the word “mart” or “warehouse” is going to be a no-go.  It’s like $5, and it will last for about three rounds of hummus-making.

Finally, though, for all of you hummus fiends out there, the reason why you should make your own.  It is dirt cheap and yields so much hummus.  Seriously, I eat hummus at a pretty good clip, and this will last me and my hummus-loving roommate a week, at least.  Just store it in the refrigerator, and, because it congeals a little bit when cold, pop it in the microwave for like 15-30 seconds before eating it.  It won’t get hot, it will just go back to it’s dippy, creamy consistency.

Try it.  If you don’t like it, there’s always the grocery store to fall back on.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go tank the GRE, and get extraordinarily drunk watching Michigan State go to the National Championship.  Go Green!

Ingredients:

• 1 c dried chickpeas, soaked overnight.  (If you want, you can use the canned stuff, drained and rinsed.  I used dried chickpeas, because, well, I’m that asshole who has to do everything the most difficult way.)
• 1 tsp Kosher salt
• 5 garlic cloves, minced
• 3/4 c tahini paste
• 1/2 c fresh lemon juice
• olive oil (to thin the hummus with)
• cayenne pepper (to taste–I like mine with a bit of a kick, so I put a pretty hefty amount in, maybe 1-2 tbs)
• chopped parsley
• (Also–you can pretty much do whatever you want with hummus.  Add pine nuts, add roasted red peppers, add whatever the hell you’d like.  If you want it incorporated with the hummus, add it in with the chickpeas.  If you want it on top, like a store-bought tub, do it later.  Obviously.)

Soak your chickpeas overnight by covering them with water and leaving them in the refrigerator.  The next day, take them out, drain the water, put them in a pot, and cover them with water again.  Put them on the stove, bring ‘em to a boil, and then simmer them for an hour to an hour and a half, until they’re tender.  Drain them, but keep the water–you’ll need it again!

Into the food processor goes the salt, tahini, garlic, and lemon juice.  Process.  Then add a half cup of water, and process until it’s smooth.  Add the drained chickpeas into the processor, and let it go again.  You’re going to have to stop every 30 seconds or so and, with a spatula, get the chickpeas off of the sides of the processor.  Add in whatever ingredients you want processed with the hummus.  Let it go again.  While the blades are whirring away, pour some of the cooking liquid into the spinning processor slowly.  Do the same with olive oil, until you’ve reached the thinness you want.  And, voila.  You’ve got yourself snacks for you and your house for a week.

(The first time I made this, I used this recipe from Smitten Kitchen as a guide.  Remember, though, that hummus-making is not a science.  Get a good idea about what to do, and then do whatever makes you happy.  Hummus hedonism 101.)